


Precipice

by Strawberry_Champagne



Category: Firefly
Genre: Comment Fic, Community: comment_fic, Drabble, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-03
Updated: 2014-09-03
Packaged: 2018-02-15 23:44:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2247852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strawberry_Champagne/pseuds/Strawberry_Champagne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The space between what we say and what is left unsaid, and what we leave behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Precipice

Every time Inara brushes past him in a corridor, smelling of jasmine and warm spice, Mal can feel his resolve eroding, stirring up like dust on a world where the plants didn’t take. It would be easy to let go, to answer the question held in dark eyes.

Wash and Zoe had shot his one rule to hell - now she is broken, a ship drifting in the black. She holds herself up with the strength that survived the war, but smiles are slower coming, laughter rarer still. That sound comes from the engine room now, from pockets of the ship where for the healers of flesh and metal, everything is shiny, brand new. Mal does his best not to notice half-hidden glances across the table, and that Inara looks both pleased and sad.

So they don’t talk about it. It’s understood, a simple fact of the ‘verse, like how a hired gun is only as loyal as his pay and Reavers ain’t men, not really. But it hangs between them, a trembling promise, bright and fragile. It doesn’t need a name. It exists in the brief touch of a cool hand on his arm, in a troubled brow, and maybe most of all in shouted words bouncing off metal.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on December 15, 2009 in the Livejournal community comment_fic  
> Prompted by: alcetis  
> Theme: Poetry  
> Prompt: "Variations on the Word Love" by Margaret Atwood


End file.
